Tag: Mindfulness

Early Saturday morning thoughts

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skyA rare bright and sunny morning here in Ireland. This poem gets close to the spacious feeling which the early sun stirs up inside:

Got up on a cool morning. Leaned out a window.
No cloud, no wind. Air that flowers held
for awhile. Some dove somewhere.

Been on probation most of my life. And
the rest of my life been condemned. So these moments
count for a lot — peace, you know.

Let the bucket of memory down into the well,
bring it up. Cool, cool minutes. No one
stirring, no plans. Just being there.

This is what the whole thing is about.

William Stafford, 1914 – 1993 Just Thinking

Each moment is complete in itself

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MilkThistle

Nothing we see or hear is perfect.

But right there in the imperfection

is perfect reality

Shunryu Suzuki-roshi

Ever-widening circles of trust.

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holding hands

Many of us have been convinced – by our society, by our own experiences in life, and by our own logic, that we cannot trust our own natural state of being. We turn away from ourselves and our experiences. In mindfulness practice we are learning not to destroy or control our feelings, but to discover them and be present with them. We begin to see how they work when we enter fully into them and give them room. We begin to see how we create our emotional lives and reactions. In this process, we learn to trust awareness and direct presence more and more deeply. As we explore the layers of our fear, our trust expands into wider and wider circles of who we are. The process of awakening can be understood as ever-widening circles of trust. …… Fearlessness is not necessarily the absence of fear. It is a positive quality that can exist side by side with fear, overcoming the limitations arising out of fear.

Gil Fronsdal, The Issue at hand

Content

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File:Domestic Cat Enjoys Her Rest.jpg

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not

Epicurus

An opportunity

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File:Grafton Street - geograph.org.uk - 1410307.jpg

Whether we are on the busy streets of New York or in the solitude of a mountain cave in Nepal, our happiness and contentment are completely in our own hands. Sitting meditation enables us to rest our mind in a present and cheerful way. When we sit, we make a direct relationship to the source of happiness. At the base of that experience is a quality of happiness, which is not a sense of giddiness, but of relaxation. Wherever we are, life is going to be coming at us. But if we use our lives as an opportunity to develop and enhance our mind, we will always be able to acknowledge that we are in a precious situation.

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche

photo of Grafton st Dublin by Oliver Dixon

Simply

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sitting

A thousand secrets are hidden in simply sitting still.

Karlfried Graf Dürckheim, German psychtheorapoist and zen teacher